


cough syrup

by hart



Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Bloodlust, Eating Disorders, Food Issues, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-19 02:29:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7340971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hart/pseuds/hart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mitchell discovers one type of hunger helps drown out another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cough syrup

**Author's Note:**

> apologies for any typos; was written in a little bit of a rush! 
> 
> trigger warnings obviously

There's a creeping sickness seeping into his veins and he knows he's had too much. It's been months, and it's been aching and itching, and now it's just vile, vile, bile and blood surging back up his throat and out crimson onto the rain-dampened concrete. It comes up his nose, too, and by the time he's finished coughing up congealed, hot red, Mitchell thinks perhaps he preferred starving.

Months of building want, and _need_ , gone in thirty minutes and it was  _good_. She had been young, and pretty, and Mitchell didn't even think for a second that he would spare her. She'd sidled up to him and perched on the adjacent bar stool, talking about her recent degree and new house and transferring from one job to another as if she was so much older than her alcohol tolerance suggested. Mitchell had smiled and stared at her jugular. Later, she'd moaned as he kissed at her throat, and later still he'd make a sick mimic of the sound as he tore it out. 

-

When Annie offers him a cup of coffee the next morning his abdomen still hurts. Abstinence had apparently shattered how much blood his stomach could take in one go, and he realises with horror that he hasn't yet brushed his teeth. 

"Don't come near me," he grumbles, pulling the duvet over his face; "hangover breath." 

"I didn't realise vampires got hangovers," Annie strokes the curls peaking out from his covers, and Mitchell wishes she wouldn't touch him with comforting intentions on her cold fingertips. 

"It takes a lot," he says after a while. 

-

"He's hungover," Annie calls to George as he offers Mitchell a plate of bolognese. 

Mitchell grunts from where he's curled up on the sofa. 

" _Still_?" George pokes his head round the fridge and looks at his flatmate with incredulous pity. "It's nearly seven o'clock. You must have drank half the bar."

Mitchell tries very hard to suppress the wave of nausea brought on by that. He doesn't feel _terrible_ anymore; just shitty. His head buzzes with the low throb of a behind-the-eye headache, and his hands shake as he clutches at his fifth cup of tea of the day. The gnawing pang of hunger claws at his insides, and he pushes it back down his throat for fear of it coming out of his mouth again. He can't tell which hunger it is in that moment; and he holds onto it as if the longer he goes without food, the more he will be convinced that that's all he needs. 

He goes to bed on six cups of tea and a cigarette.

-

"Why do we have four packets of garibaldis?" 

Mitchell looks up from the newspaper and raises an eyebrow. George waves two packets in demonstration from across the room. 

"Why _do_ we have four packets of garibaldis, George?" Mitchell asks, guessing that it might be a rhetorical question. It isn't. George puts one pack down and tears the other open, slumping down onto the sofa beside him with confusion etched into his face and a steaming mug in his hand. 

"We had four, three days ago." 

Mitchell crosses his legs and waits. 

"We normally go through a packet a day." 

Mitchell feels his nerves twist uncomfortably and he shifts in his seat. 

"That's a bit of an exaggeration," he mutters, lowering his face back behind the shield of his newspaper. 

"You've not eaten any garibaldis for the last three days," George says in a mildly horrified, accusatory tone. 

Mitchell opens his mouth to say something, but George narrows his eyes and presses a hand to his mouth in thought.

"What _have_ you eaten in the last three days?" he asks, slowly through his fingers. 

Mitchell doesn't want to answer that.

"I've never really liked garibaldis," he says instead. George blinks. 

" _What_?"

Mitchell throws his hands up in defense, newspaper falling to his lap with a crumple.

"Look, I'm sorry, raisins just don't-"

"Why didn't you _tell_ me?" George's voice climbs several octaves and Mitchell tries not to laugh. 

"I didn't want to-"

"Nearly a year have we had garibaldis as our regular tea accompaniment," his flatmate carries on aghast, "and all this time you've been pretending to like them?"

"I don't _hate_ them, mate, they're just not my favourite!" 

George looks genuinely upset as he angrily dunks the biscuit in question into his tea. The knot in Mitchell's chest loosens a little. 

-

Vampires don't really lose weight. Undead metabolism isn't a widely studied subject, but generally a vampire is left with the body they owned when they were turned; food no longer having much affect on their physical function. Mitchell steals a belt from George as his stomach flattens out without anything in it, and that's about it. 

When he hits five days of tea and coffee, he doesn't think he feels the bloodlust at all anymore. He feels his muscles cramp and his senses dull just slightly; and his chest hurts. He thinks his heart would be twitching if it beat at all. He's not thinking about blood. He runs his fingers over the hinges of his wrists and feels his skeleton pushing against his skin from within. It's no different to how it was a month ago, but there's a wary fascination in the action. He thinks of the fragility of bones. He's not thinking about blood. 

-

When six days arrive, George is cooking steak. Hunger is pressing at the insides of Mitchell's skull, making his ears ring, and he doesn't stop to think when George plates him up a portion. He's barely seated in the dining room chair before he's tearing into the hunk of flesh; and he thinks nothing has ever tasted so good, nothing has ever slipped down this easily, nothing has ever sated him so quickly, nothing except-

When he looks up, George is staring at him. Mitchell's hands stop mid-way to his mouth, shaking. 

"When," George starts very slowly, "was the last time you ate?" 

Mitchell feels his face go white. He remembers the last time he ate. 

He drops his cutlery with two deafening clangs and barely manages to trip up the stairs and crash through the bathroom door before he's doubled over the toilet and vomiting up what feels like his every organ until there's nothing left. It doesn't take long. 

Annie walks in quietly, staying back in the doorway as Mitchell heaves choking breaths, eyes squeezed shut and face pressed into his arm. She says nothing, nudging the toothbrush pot to announce her presence. A minute goes past where the only sound is Mitchell's laboured breathing. 

"Mitchell-" Annie starts, and he's on his feet, arm shooting out against the wall for balance before flushing the toilet and making his way over to the sink without looking at her. 

"Mitchell," she presses as he rinses his mouth out with Listerine and begins to walk past her. 

"Mitchell!" Annie shouts, and Mitchell turns back to her a little too quickly. 

" _What_?" he snaps, as tiny white dots clamber at the corners of his vision. 

"What's _wrong_ with you?" Annie bursts out. It's meant to be anger, but it comes out more as panic. The tears edging over her eyelashes don't help. "You've been weird for days, you're- you're not eating properly, I-" she takes a deep breath she doesn't need before lowering her voice as much as possible, "have you been killing again?" 

Mitchell laughs. The fucking irony. 

"Thanks for the credit, Annie," he hisses, turning on his heel, but a ghostly hand shoots out to grab his jacket. 

"Mitchell, please-"

" _No_ , I have not been killing again!" his voice breaks a little from the volume, and Annie flinches. "That's the fucking point!" 

Annie frowns, and Mitchell realises he might have let it slip. 

"Mitchell," she says, soft this time, laced with concern, and Mitchell hates it. 

"Just forget it," he sighs. He doesn't look at her face when he finally walks away.

-

"Is that your second pouch of baccy in a week?" George asks, and Mitchell doesn't respond because there's a filter in his mouth. His hands almost shake too much to roll. 

"Why are you doing this?" 

"The legal smoking age is eighteen," Mitchell replies when he's managed to form a cigarette, and he can feel George roll his eyes without looking at him. 

"You need food."

"Actually, I don't."

He can't be bothered for this conversation. Explaining himself to George would mean explaining why this had all started, and he would rather starve to death. He's starting to wish he could. 

"No, Mitchell, you _do_ ," George snatches the lighter from Mitchell before he can spark it, and when Mitchell reaches out for it with an offended look George holds it up like a parent confiscating a toy. Mitchell clenches his jaw and glares. "You might not die without it like the rest of us, but you are tired, you are irritable, you are _sick_. I don't know what's going on in your head but I wish you would talk to us. We are your friends, Mitchell, please, please tell us what's wrong- please _eat_."

Mitchell worries his bottom lip between his teeth and says nothing for a while. He looks down at his hands and pulls at the wool of his gloves. His nail beds are blue. 

"I'll eat," he says eventually. 

"What?"

Mitchell looks back up at George's stunned face and forces a smile. 

"It's cool," he says, "I'll eat." 

-

Mitchell picks at a scrape where his teeth caught his knuckles and forcibly ignores the way his chest tightens like a screw. For two days he's been smiling at the dinner table with George; sitting on the sofa with a bowl of cereal in his hand and Annie leaning on his shoulder; working through the three remaining packets of garibaldis in front of The Real Hustle. 

He doesn't think of blood. He thinks of bloodlust, and of how it was expelled with the rest of that girl's throat, and he thinks that maybe this way it'll work. This way he's still too hungry to think about hunger. To think about blood. 

Three days come and he's finally nailed functioning like a human being; eating, talking, not thinking of tearing people apart. Human beings have flaws, after all. Mitchell would rather this human flaw than one of his own kind. 

"Who honestly works in the beauty industry and thinks that's a good look, though, right?"

He blinks at Annie, and hopes the right answer is "yeah." 

Annie looks taken aback and Mitchell winces. Not the right answer, then.

"You think that looks good?" she squeaks; mug of tea threatening to fly out of her hand. 

"No, no, of course not," Mitchell backtracks on whatever the hell he's talking about, reaching out to take the mug before disaster strikes. 

"You just said it does!" 

Mitchell wishes he had a time machine. And a girl dictionary. He presses the heel of his palm into his eyes and shakes his head.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he admits with a guilty smile, hoping it's charming enough to pay off. Annie just squints at him.

"Are you alright?" she asks gently. Mitchell fakes bafflement. 

"Of course," he beams, grabbing a biscuit from the coffee table and excusing himself before Annie can ask any more. 

-

"You know," Annie starts quietly as she sits down on the edge of Mitchell's bed that night. He doesn't look up from his book. "I knew a girl in college like that."

"Like what?" Mitchell asks absently. 

"She thought she could get rid of... of the bad stuff. By doing what you're doing."

"And what is it that I'm doing?" Mitchell turns another page, not really reading it but not looking up at his friend either- until Annie shifts along and pulls the book carefully from his hands. Cold fingers touch his face, and Mitchell looks forward reluctantly to meet Annie's eyes. They look sad. 

"Mitchell, you're our friend."

"Why is everyone telling me that like I don't already know lately?" he moves his face out of Annie's grasp and goes to pick up his book before she all but wails out his name.

"Mitchell, _please_ ," she begs, and Mitchell jumps at the desperation in her voice. "It's _okay_ , lots of people go through this kind of thing, but please talk to us! Let us in- it's killing us to see you do this to yourself."

"You're already dead," Mitchell deadpans.

Annie slaps him hard.

" _What the fuck, Annie?_ " 

"I'm trying to help you!"

"I'm not some sixteen year old girl with fucked up insecurity issues; this is about _not killing people_!" Mitchell yells at her, and George comes bursting in through his bedroom door.

"What the fuck's going on?" he stares at the pair on the bed as Mitchell's chest rises and falls quickly, brows knitted into the harshest glare he could possibly conjure. Annie just looks at him like she can't recognize him anymore. 

"Nothing," she whispers, swiping at her cheeks and getting up to leave. Mitchell feels a weight in his chest tug.

"Annie, wait," he begins, but Annie shakes her head. 

"I'm here when you need me," she says, voice unnervingly steady, "but not before then. I can't watch it. I'm sorry."

There's a long moment of still before Mitchell just nods. Annie pulls on George's sleeve, and they close the door behind them.

-

"Sometimes I wonder why we're friends," George admits. He slides down next to his friend on the bathroom floor, leaning back against the bath as Mitchell rests against the toilet. 

"I know," he croaks out. 

"You're reckless, you're dangerous, you're cruel."

"I know," Mitchell screws his eyes shut and places his head on his knees. His fingers are trembling. "This is what it takes."

"What what takes?" George presses. Mitchell doesn't raise his head, and George can just about hear his hoarse voice carry out from between his legs.

"To not be reckless, and dangerous, and cruel," Mitchell whispers. George heaves a sigh. 

"Being reckless, and dangerous, and cruel to yourself won't fix anything," 

"I haven't thought about blood for weeks." 

"I know," George says. Several silent minutes stretch out between them.

"Is Annie alright?" Mitchell whispers. "I shouted at her."

"She's fine. I think the slap made her feel a bit better about the whole situation." 

Mitchell lets out a short laugh. 

"I deserved it," he says. George looks at the back of Mitchell's head, his neck, his spine poking out from the collar of his shirt. He looks at his ungloved hands. Two of his knuckles are red raw. George finds it hard to think anyone deserves this. 

"You need to stop," George says. 

"I know." 

"You need to apologise to Annie," George says.

"I know."

"You need to apologise to me."

"I'm sorry."

"You need to get some help for this."

Mitchell says nothing. He feels George rest his head against his shoulder, and it doesn't surprise him when Annie appears on his other side, wrapping her cool hands around his own. 

"No more of this," she whispers into his curls. Mitchell lifts his head up enough to rest his chin on her arm. 

"No more of this," he agrees.


End file.
